[dude1394]

Originally Posted by Underdog

What the hell is "guvment"???

Guvment.

Troubled US mortgage finance giant Fannie Mae said Thursday it lost almost 60 billion dollars last year and expected to suffer more losses in 2009, and asked for a further 15.2 billion dollars in government aid.

The US government-controlled Fannie Mae reported a loss of 25.2 billion dollars in the fourth quarter driven mainly by the effects of a prolonged housing slump and a global financial crisis. It had a third-quarter loss of 29.0 billion dollars.

For the full year of 2008, the company posted a loss of 58.7 billion dollars, almost 27 times higher than the 2007 loss of 2.1 billion dollars.

Fannie Mae said it submitted a request Wednesday for 15.2 billion dollars from the Treasury "in order to eliminate our net worth deficit as of December 31, 2008."

"We expect the market conditions that contributed to our net loss for each quarter of 2008 to continue and possibly worsen in 2009, which is likely to cause further reductions in our net worth," the company said in a statement.

The fourth-quarter loss was driven mainly by 12.3 billion dollars in credit losses due to declining housing market conditions, 12.3 billion dollars in losses on derivatives and 4.6 billion dollars in writedowns of the value of its mortgage-backed securities, the statement said.